Running the International Student Office with AI Agents: SEVIS Deadlines, OPT Reporting and Policy Watch

About this course

SEVIS reporting requirements do not pause when the policy environment moves: a school still registers each student within 30 days of the session start, reports Form I-17 changes within 21 days, and an OPT student still has 10 days to report a change. This course teaches the international student office how to run that fixed calendar with AI agents that track deadlines, compute what is due, and draft the SEVIS entry or student notice for a DSO to review. The agent never advises a student or determines status; the DSO decides, and legal questions go to counsel. You will build a deadline tracker and a drafting queue on a sample roster, size the OPT reporting load using IIE's figures (294,253 students on OPT in 2024/25, up 21 percent), track a deposit-to-visa pipeline against the fall 2026 outlook, and set up a dated Policy Watch that reports rule status without turning it into advice. Why now: a final rule was enjoined one day before it took effect on 2026-09-14, and the deadline work underneath it did not stop.

What you will be able to do

1. State the fixed SEVIS reporting deadlines (30-day registration, 21-day Form I-17 changes, annual DSO verification window, 10-day OPT reporting, 6-month STEM OPT validation) and compute every open deadline for a sample roster.
2. Write the boundary document that defines what an office agent may do (track, compute, draft, route) and may never do (advise, determine status, submit without DSO sign-off), and test an agent against it.
3. Build a deadline-tracking and drafting agent on a sample roster whose every output lands in a DSO review queue with the rule and record fields it used.
4. Size the office's OPT and STEM OPT reporting load from IIE data and the institution's own counts, and set a staffing and automation plan against it.
5. Track a deposit-to-I-20-to-visa pipeline against the NAFSA fall 2026 outlook and IIE fall 2025 snapshot, and report the office's exposure by country of citizenship.
6. Maintain a dated Policy Watch that records the status of each moving rule with its primary source, and re-verify it on a monthly cadence.

Who this course is for

Roles: Designated School Officials (DSOs) and Principal DSOs, international student and scholar services (ISSS) directors, international enrollment managers, and the registrar or IT staff who maintain the SIS-to-SEVIS batch.

Institutions: any SEVP-certified institution: research universities, regional publics, community colleges with F-1 programs, and private colleges with a small office where one person is both DSO and admissions counselor.

Before you start: the learner should hold or work alongside a DSO role and know the Form I-20 and SEVIS basics taught in SEVP's own free training. No coding is required. The lab uses an AI agent through a browser on a supplied sample roster; no real student data is used.

Format

• Estimated time: 10 to 12 hours.
• Level: intermediate. Assumes DSO-level familiarity with SEVIS; assumes nothing about software.
• Hands-on: one lab that builds a tracking and drafting agent on a supplied sample roster of 40 F-1 records (including 12 on post-completion OPT and 4 on STEM OPT), five templates the office keeps, three discussions, and a capstone on the learner's own office.
• Structure: 4 sections, each ending in an AI conversation assessment, then a capstone assessment.

Self-paced. Every lesson is taught by an AI tutor that opens with a short story and works through one idea and one question at a time. Each section ends with an AI conversation assessment, and the course closes with a capstone assessment. Section assessments count for 60% and the capstone for 40%; 70% passes. There are no multiple-choice quizzes.

Currency of this course

Last verified 2026-09-28. The immigration rules referenced in Section 4 are moving. Every status statement in this course sits in Section 4 (Policy Watch) with that date, and the office re-verifies it monthly. Nothing in this course is legal or immigration advice; questions about an individual's status go to the Designated School Official (DSO) and, where needed, to immigration counsel.